If ever there was a time to get down on our knees to pray that Iraq's
opposing factions will compose their differences in the interests of
peace, that time is now. Because after four years of chaos the recent
infusion of substantial new numbers of American troops, commonly known
as "The Surge", under the brilliant new strategy of General David
Petraeus, is starting to pay off. Appalled by the utter contempt for
human life displayed by the foreign fanatics who form the backbone of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and observing how
these same fanatics are now throughout the Sunni sectors almost
everywhere on the run, the Sunni tribal chiefs have decided at last to
cast their lot with us, and that makes all the difference. Whether
partition or integration in a loose confederation will be the ultimate
outcome for Iraq, there now are grounds for a reasonable hope that Al Qaeda's defeat and the
restoration of order are no longer beyond our reach.
Such is the conclusion now being drawn by expert observers
who previously were skeptics about the prospects for our success, among
them Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the [liberal-leaning]
Brookings Institution, and Kenneth Pollack, director of research at the
Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. In a jointly authored
op-ed essay in the July the thirtieth issue of the New York Times, they had this to
say. (And that it took courage to say it is attested by the outburst of
denunciation that their essay evoked from the anti-war crowd).

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A War We Just Might Win
By Michael E. O"Hanlon
and Kenneth M. Pollack
Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting
with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political
debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush Administration has over four
years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration's
critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes
taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to
understand. We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in
military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush
Administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the
gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but
a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice
when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips
to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated-many sensed
they had the wrong strategy, and were using the wrong tactics and were
risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us
they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus;
they are confident in his strategy they see real results, and they feel
now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing
the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new
political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing
basic services-electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation-to the
people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored
to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality
rates are down roughly a third since the surge began-though they remain
very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding
Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a
(largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army
unit. He and his men had built an Arab- style living room, where he met
with the local Sunni Sheikhs--all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jiliadist
groups-who were now competing to secure his friendship.

In Baghdad's Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some
of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to
life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with
the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused
them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a
mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local
Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once
the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul.
This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs,
Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number
only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate.
Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi
Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest
fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the
country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term
remains a major question mark.

But for now, things look much better than before. American
advisors told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi
commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American
high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army
battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for
as long as American forces remain in Iraq.)

In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in
terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army's highly effective
Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005.
Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish and 27 percent Sunni
Arab.

In the past, few Iraqi units could do more than provide a
few "jundis" (soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi face on largely American
operations. Today, in only a few sectors did we find American
Commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were
useless-something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous
trip to Iraq in late 2005.

The additional American military formations brought in as
part of the surge, General Petraeus's determination to hold areas until
they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing
competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more
whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans
leave.

In war, sometimes it's important to pick the right
adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the
sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular
animus against Al Qaeda and
other Salaftst groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada
al Sadr's Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized
average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and
seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been
that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists
and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and
best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six
months has gone from the worst part of lraq to the best (outside the
Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salarist allies.
Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of
Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets with body armor.

Another surprise was how well the coalition's new Embedded
Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully
staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen
cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political
structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new
emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success
where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.

In some places where we have failed to provide the
civilian manpower to fill out the reconstruction teams, the surge has
still allowed the military to fashion its own advisory groups from
battalion, brigade and division staffs. We talked to dozens of military
officers who before the war had known little about governance or
business but were now ably immersing themselves in projects to provide
the average Iraqi with a decent life.

Outside Baghdad, one of the biggest factors in the
progress so far has been the effort to decentralize power to the
provinces and local governments. But more must be done. For example,
the Iraqi National Police, which are controlled by the Interior
Ministry, remain mostly a disaster. In response, many towns and
neighborhoods are standing up local police forces, which generally
prove more effective, less corrupt and less sectarian. The coalition
has to force the warlords in Baghdad to allow the creation of neutral
security forces beyond their control.

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In
particular, we still face huge hurdles on the POLITICAL front. Iraqi
politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position
against one another when major steps towards reconciliation-or at least
accommodation--are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely.
Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not
feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may
splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and
dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part?
And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These
haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on
forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq
today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into
2008.